Tag archives for conservation

I imagine a tiger. He’ll move through the forest and his days Leaving his traces on the mud banks Of a river whose name he doesn’t know. In his world there are no names or past Or future, only the certainty of now. —Jorge Luis Borges, The Other Tiger In reeds tinged red in the…

The pangolin is the world’s most highly-traded mammal, with more than a million being poached from the wild over the last decade, but most people are not aware such an animal even exists. iLCP Fellow Paul Hilton urges us to pay attention to the decimation of the pangolin, before it is too late.

Tuna is the second most popular seafood in the United States, yet for most Americans, it’s a non-descript protein puck that inevitably gets mixed with mayonnaise and celery. Maybe the tuna in that can came from the Philippines, or Micronesia? Perhaps it was caught by a Japanese vessel and transferred to a processing plant…

The celestial odometer clicks over to a new year on the Chinese calendar today, and it’s a Year of the Sheep. By some interpretations it may also be the Year of the Goat, but for National Geographic it is an opportunity to celebrate argali Ovis ammon polii, the world’s largest sheep. Perhaps no one is…

The oceans need our help. Human impacts – overfishing, pollution, invasive species, habitat destruction, acidification and climate change – have put our ocean species on the cusp of mass extinctions today. Scientists predict the collapse of major fisheries across the world within the next decades. We need to realize that fish are more than just food. Fish are wildlife, as well as critical components of complex marine ecosystems and food webs that must be maintained. We urgently need a network of marine protected areas (MPAs) to help sustain the oceans that in turn sustain all of us.

Rare footage of wild snow leopards taken in the Tost mountain range in Mongolia’s South Gobi province shows a vibrant population of these endangered cats – including a mother with three cubs. Click the image or read the whole post for video footage.

“In our work at Conservian, we’ve done aerial surveys before, but this was the trip of a lifetime,” says conservation biologist, Margo Zdravkovic, following six days of surveying the Bahamas with LightHawk volunteer pilot Jimmy Roswell of Jupiter, Florida. With Roswell at the controls of his bright yellow Piper PA-18 Super Cub seaplane and Zdravkovic…

National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen has spent his life capturing images of wild creatures in the world’s coldest places. From northern icons like polar bears, walruses, and British Columbia’s spirit bear, to Antarctic stars like penguins and leopard seals, Nicklen has photographed it all. He has a commitment to seeking out the wilderness spirit and…

Mangroves are trees that have evolved to survive in flooded coastal environments. A fragile web of life that generates valuable ecosystem services. Mexico is one of the countries with the most mangroves, but also occupies one of the first places in the rate of deforestation. Each year thousands of hectares are cleared and replaced by shrimp farms, agribusiness plantations, or mega tourism development. At current rates of deforestation, in 25 years about 50% of mangroves in Mexico will be lost. http://thenaturalnumbers.org/mangroves.html

Florida is said to have the highest concentration of freshwater springs on Earth. The Florida Wildlife Corridor #Glades2Gulf Expedition is traversing springs country near the Gulf of Mexico and recently explored several of these wonderful windows into the underground aquifer. Our first plunge was into the head spring of the Chassahowitzka River before following the river’s five-mile journey downstream…

The chief sat in the shade on a plastic chair that his wives had brought from inside. He was dressed to go out, with his wooden accoutrements– the herding stick and club that every Maasai man usually carries – were laid across his knees. His truck’s engine was running on the other side…

It has been a decade since viewers first encountered the popular penguins of the crowd-pleasing Madagascar movie franchise. In the 2005 hit, the penguins eventually find their way to the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean along with their old friends from the Central Park Zoo: a zebra, lion, giraffe and a hippo who accidentally got dropped off there. Adventures ensue, the running joke is that these visitors are all out of place on Madagascar, as indeed they are. Or are they?

From Chandra Kirana in Bogor, Indonesia. Six Indigenous communities have launched an ecotourism initiative that would show off their ancestral forests in a bid to develop alternate economic models that local government in Indonesia could embrace, moving away from extractive industries such as mining and palm oil plantations. The initiative, called GreenIndonesia, would ultimately help…

Soon after Hurricane Odile roared through Cabo San Lucas and the far end of Baja California with 120 mile-per-hour winds, LightHawk was in the air to document the extensive wind and flood damage left by the Category 3 storm. LightHawk’s Mesoamerica program manager Armando J. Ubeda worked to bring the expedition together quickly. National Geographic…

Absolutely stunning! Our amazing Cape parrots take my breath away every time! Proud, vibrant, wild parrots! Please vote for the Cape parrot as South Africa’s favourite bird and help us raise the public profile of this little-known endemic species. Around 1,000 Cape parrots remain in the last yellowwood forests of South Africa. Take a few seconds to…

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Pristine Seas: Seychelles LaunchesThe National Geographic Pristine Seas team is out exploring the waters of the Seychelles, an archipelago just north of Madagascar, to study and film the incredible abundance and diversity of marine life there. (Photo by Manu San Félix)

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